Mrs Pargeter 06; Mrs Pargeter’s Point of Honour

∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Point of Honour ∧

Twenty-Six

The trilling of the bedside telephone insinuated itself into Mrs Pargeter’s morning dream of some sylvan picnic with her late husband. Slowly she opened her eyes, greeting this day, like every other, with enormous confidence and the knowledge that things were bound to go well for her. She felt serenely rested. The lavish dinner of the night before – and the full bottle of champagne before it – had left her with nothing so vulgar as a hangover, merely a delicious sense of having been pampered, and having deserved it.

She looked across to the photograph on the bedside table. The suited image of her late husband smiled gravely back at her. “Morning, love,” she said, as she did every morning. “I was only talking about you yesterday. Saying what an admirer of the British legal system you were. And what a punctilious old fuddy-duddy you were when it came to moral issues.”

Next she consulted her watch. Nearly half past nine. Very satisfactory.

The telephone trilled on. She reached across and answered it. “Hello?”

“It’s me,” a familiar voice intoned.

“Truffler, how good to hear you.”

“Just ringing to say we’ve found out where the paintings are.”

“Brilliant. I knew you would. Going to have any problems getting them out?”

Truffler Mason, mobile phone pressed to his cheek, looked across at the red Transit van. There was no question he’d found the right one. The number plate tallied with what had appeared on Jukebox Jarvis’s computer screen. It was Rod D’Acosta’s vehicle all right.

But Truffler was looking at it through the padlocked gates of a car breaker’s yard. This was a thickly walled lot, with barbed-wire defences running round the top of the wall. The area was decorated with a large number of signs bearing such deterrent legends as ‘ELECTRONIC ALARMS IN OPERATION’ and ‘GUARD DOGS PATROL THESE PREMISES’.

“Yes,” said Truffler Mason, in reply to Mrs Pargeter’s question. “Maybe a few problems.”